Notes From A Burning House

Today, I am a guest blogger on a friend’s MySpace page.  The piece is long but lots of fun, I think: "Dick Cheney Meets The Muppets." Please enjoy it. 

Meanwhile, in the scarier land of make-believe we call "reality," my body amazes me with the gentle way it has of just doing its thing.  It just takes care of itself.  My body is much wiser than I am. 

Today I have not been feeling terrific.  My "A" game feels like it is submerged in the tank of the toilet.  Could it be some evil egg foo young?  Could it be stress and anger at the DMV and the frustrations that go with trying to set foot on the vanishing ice cap that once was the American middle class?  Could it be sorrow over a lost friend, missing people who are far away, or one cross-town traffic jam too many this week? 

My ego, the Senator from "I-My-Me," demands explanations and accountability.  Who or what is to blame for me not being happy?  Who or what is to blame for my life being other than what it is, for my stomach being upset, for me having doubts and fears about my life?  Oh the injustice of it. 

Meanwhile, my body just does what it needs to do and doesn’t offer any testimony about it.  Some embarrassing noise, perhaps; a vapor; and then sleep.  A good, long sleep.  That’s all. 

My body is my mother.  Whether I’m bleeding or aching or peeling, it tends always to wash me up, give me some unsweet iced tea, and put me down for a nap - just like mama.

Today, there was one additional prescription: having my hair shampooed.  Although I happened to need a haircut anyway, this procedure was more medicinal than cosmetic.  "What you need," my body might say if it felt a need to talk, "Is someone else’s fingers scrubbing your scalp.  Go now." 

*     *     *

To SuperCuts!  To SuperCuts!  A large Armenian woman greeted me and took over where mama leaves off, soaking my head and giving me a good scrub and laughing when I fall asleep right there on the sink. 

Now we’re in the spinning chair that also goes up and down, wearing the purple plastic whole-body bib, listening to another customer flirt with the staff in a voice loud enough to be heard in the supermarket across the street.  "I LOVE ARMENIAN WOMEN!" he says.  "I LOVE THEIR NOSES AND THEIR EYES!"  I wanted to ask him, "How would you dispose of the rest of the cadaver?" but instead I pretended not to listen.  As if I had any choice about it.  "NO, NO PRODUCT IN MY HAIR PLEASE.  I KEEP IT CLEAN ON MY OWN!  WOW, YOU DID SUCH A GOOD JOB.  YOU ARE AMAZING."

Product?  Oh no!  Wait!  Before I can protest, product is being rubbed into my hair: quick-setting hair crap that smells like a urinal cake.  I hate that shit.  I smile and thank her because she is trying to make me look good.  Meanwhile, she has told me about her recent hair dye mishap, explaining why her bleached hair is streaked with bands of green. 

Young Mr. LOUD has left the building, but I still think I can hear him somewhere out on Sunset Boulevard.  My haircutter sighs.  "He’s a really nice guy, but he’s got big problems.  Drugs.  Big drug user.  Trying to get clean.  He goes to a 12-step meeting around here - and people are selling the drugs to him right there at the meeting!"

"Are you kidding me?  Right at the meeting?"

"Sure." 

I take my haircut to go, and leave with it.  I still don’t have registration stickers on my car and drive around feeling like James Bond in the enemy fortress, ready to be apprehended at any time.

"So, Mr. Bond, with all your exploding ball point pens and thermo-nuclear detonating keychains and supermodel nuclear physicists populating your Astin-Martin in between death-defying sortees for the glory of your Queen and democracy and slightly-restrained capitalism, you were just a bit careless, weren’t you?  Forgot about those little stickers on the license plate of your leather-interior turbo hovercraft!  Well, Mr. Bond, every game comes to its end…

"Jaws?  Send our favorite secret agent - to - THE DMV LINE!"

"NO!  NOT THE DMV LINE!" 

"HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha….!"

*     *      *

And I wake up from another nap, soothing my eyes and running my fingers through my hair - until they get stuck there in a goopy mass of dried product, and I have to saw my hand free with a nail file. 

My mind is a shambles, but my body is mama.  And mama is patient. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.